Turner Publishing (http://www.turnerpublishing.com) asked if I would consider reviewing a new book. I’m glad I agreed. Historic Photos of Alaska has just been published, a large format book of black and white photographs from the period 1867 to 1979. Dermot Cole, long-time columnist for the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer, provides the text and captions.

As a journalist, Dermot also has an interest in history (apart from his twin brother, Terrance, history professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks). Dermot Cole is the author of Amazing Pipeline Stories published by Epicenter Press in 1997, about the people and Fairbanks during the Alaska oil pipeline construction.

The perspective of Historic Photos of Alaska, is for those readers outside Alaska. That is, this is a pictorial history of Alaska as part of “America”. [Through no fault of this book, many in the US will still consider Alaska as a foreign body, along with New Mexico.]

The photos are arranged by time periods, from purchase to statehood– 1867-1905, 1906-1919, 1920-1940, and 1941-1979. These periods represent significant periods of US and Alaska relations. The orientation is a deliberate effort to stand apart from the usual Alaskana picture books. Another significant difference in this book is the choice of rarely seen photos and not the ubiquitous ones. The photos are reproduced with sufficient quality to review again and again and see something new each time.

Readers can follow themes such as regional changes (southeast Alaska also known as the Northwest Coast compared to Nome in northwest Alaska) and transportation. However, other themes can be chosen by readers according to personal interest.

Dogs
Most of the dogs are Alaska huskies (freight variety), such as ones on pages 44 and 55 and in harness, page 58. However, the team on page 67 is actually part of a Saami family (reindeer herders originally from Scandinavia. Note the hats and boot toes.) The harness setup is very different from that of the Eskimo family team on page 128. There are also sporting dogs (early 20th century conformation) such as the one on page 92 belonging to Jim Haly. Look carefully. The dog has just spotted another dog out of view, and kicked up a cloud of dust with his hind legs.

Electric trees
Even on the frozen tundra of Nome (page 111) and sprouting ever more branches over time in populated areas such as Cordova page 120 and Fairbanks page 151.

Military
One way to trace the influence of the military in Alaska is through men’s hats in the photos. Since Territorial days, the military has been a significant economic and development force in Alaska. Much of the early geological studies and geodetic surveys were military. World War II and then the Cold War continued the inflow of money and people. Photos from pages 168 to 180 show differing aspects of building the Al-Can or Alaska Highway and the later battles of Attu and the Aleutians. (see related posts here on the Al-Can and the Aleutians, https://theelderlies.wordpress.com/special-projects/photo-index-cking-wwii/)

Miscellany
Everywhere. The curiosity of Edwardian women’s fashion in open-air fish camp (useful against mosquitoes I suppose); the plank streets (for cars and horses) 400 miles from the nearest highway; even a Piggly-Wiggly store outside of the South.

Dermot Cole avoided the shop worn stash of Alaska photos. However, the next to last photo, page 197, is of the oil pipeline’s zigzagged engineering (to avoid temperature stresses) up the North Slope and over the Brooks Mountain Range. It’s a clever homage to the iconic Klondike gold rush photo of the future miners traipsing up the Chilkoot Pass.

I do have some quibbles with the book. There is an amazing variety of horses depicted but no photos of cows at Creamer’s Dairy in Fairbanks (I like the image of the wood stove chimney peeking out the milk truck to keep contents from freezing at 40 below).

More importantly, an outline map of Alaska is needed, with the places of photos identified.

The southwest of Alaska is mostly excluded. Considering that most folks in or outside Alaska believe everyone lives in an Eskimo igloo, it would also be helpful to include a map of languages/cultural regions in the state. Most readers will not be aware of the significance of the temporary, river going, hide boat depicted on page 44 built by the Athabascan Indian trapper to bring his skins to market. Compare with the more permanent skin boat built by Iñupiat Eskimo marine hunters on page 103. I already noted the Saami family.

The period of the first half of 1919 is missing although extremely important in the demography and history of non-urban Alaska. Upwards of 80% to 100% of people in some communities died during the pandemic of the “Spanish Flu”. The Jesse Lee Home (I ran across this recently published history) was one of several that cared for orphans left behind (those that survived long enough for help to reach them).

A great companion volume would be John S. Whitehead’s 2004. Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawaii, and the Battle for Statehood. Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press. ISBN: 0826336361 9780826336361 082633637X 9780826336378, OCLC: 55665367

This book is not supposed to be a comprehensive pictorial history. Cole did an amazing job just to make a selection from all the possibilities and put together such an enjoyable book.

“Senior” and “junior” in research funding contexts usually means time since PhD was granted, often less than 5 years for junior. There is an implied age barrier which is sometimes not so implied with cutoff ages of 35 or 40 years old.

Many people are trapped in the in-between. Support for new scholars or scientists is a recent phenomenon, needed but nothing is available for those who struggled without assistance trying to establish a career. And, most grants are available only to those established at an academic institution or with an established non-profit. There is a real need to support good and valuable ideas outside these limitations, too.

Application deadline: 3/31/2007

The Boston College Center for Retirement Research is soliciting proposals for the Steven H. Sandell Grant Program in Retirement Research. The Sandell Grant Program provides opportunities for junior scholars from a wide variety of academic disciplines and senior scholars working in a new area to pursue cutting-edge projects on retirement income issues. Topic areas include: (1) Social Security and retirement; (2) macroeconomic analyses of Social Security; (3) wealth and retirement income; (4) program interactions; (5) international research; and (6) demographic research.

Up to five grants of $40,000 are available to researchers with a Ph.D. or comparable credentials affiliated with an academic institution or research organization. Successful applicants are required to complete the research project outlined in their proposal and to present the results to U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) in Washington, D.C. within one year.

The post office box this week held an issue of the New Yorker which generated mixed feelings. Many New Yorker cartoons (http://www.cartoonbank.com/) are funny because they skewer our fallacies and foibles using the stereotypes we all have about each other. Most of the stereotypes protrayed are of rich white folk.

This recent cartoon is funny because it reveals the biased attitude many employers have towards older workers. Unfortunately, the medium of expressing a worthy idea is based upon an ethnic stereotype which is problematic, at the best.

by Lee Lorenz

Hold it—we almost forgot his benefits package.” (Two eskimos sending a third out to sea on a small slab of ice.)

The stereotype underlying the cartoon’s point about ageism is false. Recently we had a physician lie about just such a scenario, up north. People were quite hurt by the accusation.

JAMA falls foul of fabricated suicide story [JAMA is Journal of the American Medical Association]

by Deborah Josefson, San Francisco

An essay published in JAMA’s Piece of my Mind section, has stirred controversy after it was revealed that the events depicted in it were fictional.

The essay was written by a medical student, Shetal Shah, and appeared last October (JAMA 2000;284:1897-8). In his essay, Mr Shah described an encounter with a 97 year old Inuit [sic. Eskimo people live in Alaska and Inuit people live in Canada.] man, a toothless elderly member of the Siberian Yupik tribe, who, feeling useless, came to say goodbye to the young medical student before committing suicide by walking off into a frozen tundra in the morning fog.

In a letter to JAMA, Dr Michael Swenson, a physician with Norton Health Sound in Nome, Alaska, and Shah’s tutor during his elective, denied the existence of such a patient. Moreover, Dr Swenson charged that Mr Shah’s false account promulgates false stereotypes about the Inuit people and perpetuates ancient myths…. Dr Swenson said that he understood Mr Shah’s tweaking of events to make them more of a story but said that the account was entirely fictional and as such reflected more of our culture’s prejudices towards elderly people than those of the Siberian Yupik….

I’m not sure there is any evidence for any such a scenario in the past, except maybe under extreme conditions of long ago.

Certainly, such a slur against a large group of US citizens should not have been printed in the New Yorker. As the response to the BMJ article said,

When will medical journals learn to leave anecdotes for Cosmopolitan and fictionalized accounts for the New Yorker? The author’s explanatory note is lame in the extreme. BMJ 2001;323:472 ( 1 September )

On the other hand, I am not as troubled by Sam Gross’ cartoon at the bottom, in part because he skewers every stereotype and in part because it highlights so well the predominant establishment attitude around here about caring and valuing older people.

This is 2006. We have no nursing home; we had an assisted living residence, which was never used as such. Another assisted living residence was promised to open September 2005. After several people inquired publicly, the health corp. finally announced it might open in 2008.

July 15, 2006, Assisted living home construction could begin soon

Construction on an Assisted Living Home in the YK Delta for elders and adults with disabilities may be just beyond the horizon.

“Establishing an assisted living home is important because we have an aging population in our region and we don’t have a facility where we can take care of them properly,” said Gene Peltola, CEO of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation.

Despite the fact that the elderly make up one of the fastest growing populations in the YK Delta, the region remains as the only area in Alaska that has no long-term assisted living facility.

O’Folks (off their rocker)

Arctic sunset

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